Thoughts from a new VR player

We got a Vive for Christmas. Here are a few scattered thoughts about the current state of virtual reality after a week of play.

• As I've gotten older, I've noticed I'm getting much more prone to motion sickness in games -- I just can’t handle very long sessions of shooters like Wolfenstein and Serious Sam without frequent breaks.However, I was surprised to discover that VR games mostly don’t make me sick.
• This is because VR developers have mostly figured out that motion sickness comes from motion. That is, it’s bad to have your visual sense tell you that you’re moving around, while your inner ear tells you you’re standing still. To address this, VR games either mostly take place in a single location, or handle movement very cautiously.
• For example, “I Expect You To Die” is a spy game with comedy elements, which contrives a bunch of situations where you are trying to escape a bunch of death traps sitting in a chair. One level has you trying to drive a car out a plane. Another has you trying to communicate with a contact from a hijacked train. Another seats you behind a desk in a supervillain’s lair, hunting for hidden information.
• For another example, there’s Serious Sam: The Last Hope. I love Serious Sam titles, and they’ve traditionally been fast paced run and gun shooters with ridiculous waves of constant enemies. But TLH is basically a shooting gallery. They dump you in an environment like an ancient temple or a canyon, and you pick a weapon to wield in each hand. Enemies charge at you or fire projectiles that can be shot down, so you just stand in this virtual space and try to hit things before they kill you.
• For games and environments that require you to explore, a typical strategy is to let you point at places on the floor and press a button to teleport there. When a game does allow free movement, there is often a “comfort mode” available, which restricts your vision to a very small tunnel until you stop moving.
• This is all very cool and clever. It feels really neat to be surrounded by a massive 3D environment and feel like you’re in a video game. However, it’s also a tiny bit disappointing that it’s not like scenes from “Ready Player One” for instance, where you’re just moving around like a regular person. You can’t actually go anywhere without bumping into walls.
• One of the other really fun aspects of VR is when a game makes you do fiddly things with your body or your handheld controllers. I Expect You To Die puts you in situations where you have to play around with switches and levers, lets you levitate things telekinetically, and sometimes makes you duck and throw things. In Serious Sam, Besides letting you dual wield and aim shotguns and rocket launchers -- which is already super cool -- there’s also a sniper rifle that you actually hold up to your eye with two hands, an exploding bow and arrow that you have to draw back, and a sword that blasts laser waves when you swing it. Superhot lets you physically dodge bullets in slow motion, and punch enemies. That’s all awesome.
• Besides games, there’s a whole lot of support for other interesting environments. YouTube has a VR section with videos frequently filmed by people who have a 360 degree camera. Google Earth VR is downright awe inspiring -- you can hover over a mountain, or see the whole Earth as a giant map in your face, with horizons above and below you. It’s fun to turn comfort mode OFF and actually pretend to fly around like Superman. But again, that motion sickness is a constant threat.
• Also, some “games” are just brief, mildly interactive experiences, which is still quite entertaining. There’s nothing quite like getting personally murdered by the huge looming face of GLaDOS from Portal, or waving a light around a dimly lit area full of creepy knick knacks.
• The main downsides are that the headset can get super sweaty after a lot of use, and games that make you stand around waving your arms can leave you feeling a little strained and sore. Come to think of it, I should really hunt for games that actually make you get exercise, because hey, may as well roll with it.

Most Trusted

I'm writing up a new intro for a "fake news" talk I'm giving in San Antonio last week. Two of my main interests are politics and online technologies. It's always fascinated me how news in general has become decentralized, and also custom tailored to the people watching it.

One of my earliest memories of being aware of news media was seeing Walter Cronkite on TV. I was reading about Cronkite's career, and I kept seeing he was called "The Most Trusted Man in America." That seems like an awfully lofty title to me, so I looked into that and found that it was based on an actual national survey, where people were asked who they trust the most. Cronkite won handily, in at least a couple of different years -- there was a poll in 1974 and another 1985. Admittedly, the number of options in the polls were somewhat limited, but still, the narrative of Cronkite as "most trusted" has persisted.

And I thought that was odd, because the question "Who is the most trusted person in America?" doesn't seem to even have any clear meaning in 2017. Back then, there were three major networks which ran nightly news; today we have thousands of websites that people follow and curate based on how much the sites say things they like to hear.

Still, I looked into this further, and found that a similar survey was done in 2013, and boy, are the results revealing. The most trusted man in America is... Tom Hanks.

Second is Sandra Bullock. From there the list goes:

3. Denzel Washington
4. Meryl Streep
5. Maya Angelou
6. Steven Spielberg
7. Bill Gates
8. Alex Trebek
9. Melinda Gates
10. Julia Roberts

So obviously a bunch of things jump out from these results. Five of the top ten are actors. One is a director, one is a game show host. The first person on the list who is not an actor is Maya Angelou, who is a lovely and interesting person, is primarily known in the public consciousness as a poet, so she's still sort of in the "entertainment" category. So that's eight out of ten who are entertainers, with Bill and Melinda Gates presumably being trusted at least as much for their charitable foundation as for Bill's history as a software magnate.

There's something weirdly, ironically interesting about a list of "the most trusted people in America" being more than 50% composed of people (if we include Spielberg) who make pretend stories for a living. (That's not an insult. I love movies, and I respect actors and directors. I just don't primarily think of them as people to go to for advice and information.)

Nobody who investigates or reports news is anywhere to be seen on the top ten. I know some people would conclude this means that journalists are inherently untrustworthy, but I think that's a little oversimplistic. Instead I'd point out say that that the way people get their information in an extremely fractured way now. As individual, you may trust or listen to one set of voices, but no matter who those might be, there are almost certainly a lot of people who actively, aggressively dislike them and think they are the biggest liars on the planet.

Quick check-in on my life

Hey folks. I don't know if anyone still follows this blog, but it's something that's been on my mind every once in a while this year.

When I look at the final few posts of the blog, it seems a little embarrassing. Like a lot of people, I wrote a number of confident posts pointing out that Donald Trump couldn't possibly win the election, because he's unpopular and terrible. I was in good company, but I was incredibly, comically wrong, and just writing a post to acknowledge that fact that is a big hurdle that I've taken this long to get to.

No, I didn't die of embarrassment or scurry off to a cave to disappear from society. It's just that the fact that this blog still exists, and what to use it for, didn't wind up being a terribly high priority for me.

The election sucked, but also at the end of last year, I got hit in the face with a lot of stuff to deal with at once. My work became significantly more challenging -- I've been writing back end software to build up the Fireside Gatherings website, and it's a real beast. My career is actually going quite well. It's been nine years since I completed my Master's degree, and it took me a long time to settle in to a permanent job, but I've been working for Blizzard for three years now. It's a fantastic company, and I've grown a lot as a software engineer. But the downside is, the more I've focused on work, the less energy I've had to sit down and do things like writing long posts.

On another front, I'm in my second year as president of the Atheist Community of Austin. It's pretty far from a full time job, but it's stressful enough to contribute to the same lack of desire to write posts. It's not a position I went after, but once I was in, I wanted to take some serious steps towards making the organization financially solid, improve donations and build up the TV show that I've been involved with for the past 17 years.

Also, my son Ben is now 15 years old. He's starting his sophomore year of high school, and he's learning to drive. I've always found parenting very rewarding, although raising a teenager is every bit as challenging as I've heard.

When I send personal email, I have a signature line to the various online places where I post stuff. That includes this blog. My main purpose in writing a new post was to make sure that I have a clear acknowledgement that I made mistakes in predicting last year's political outcome, although I still believe in the basic principles behind what I said. Trump was a dangerously ignorant and unqualified candidate, and as a president those qualities have made him even more dangerous. He was unpopular then, and he's unpopular now, but the people who do like him are very dedicated, and that's a reality we have to face in this country.

But also, I've noticed that I'm spread pretty thin in terms of online presence. Blogging doesn't hold the prominent place that it used to in our worldwide discourse; most people have moved on to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and I'm no exception. I guess a lot of the time I scratch my writing itch by tossing off a quick witticism or comment on a news in a few paragraphs. Beyond that, as a regular host/cohost of The Atheist Experience and The Non-Prophets, I have lots of opportunity to trot out my opinions on some topics, and reach a pretty broad audience. None of that feels exactly the same as when I used to blog regularly, but again, I have a more limited supply of attention to devote to those things than I used to.

I've also been doing a number of talks in various places, to Secular Student Alliance groups and local atheist organizations. Next week I'm giving a talk on "Skepticism and Fake News" in San Antonio. I am thinking about writing a new brief introduction, and it occurred to me that I could post it on the blog to solidify my thoughts.

So I have a few purposes in writing this post now. First, I just want to pop in and say, sorry about not blogging much all year, but I'm still alive and well and things are generally fine for me. Second, I just want to clear out some of the cobwebs and own up to my past mistakes. And finally, I want to leave this as a reminder to post some new thoughts about fake news, which I have generally been doing before a live audience, so it's a good idea to have a written record of some of those thoughts.

Until next time! ... Even if it turns out that next time takes another year or two.

No, Trump won't drop out, and it wouldn't matter if he did.

Perhaps I am stating the obvious here, but Donald Trump will never, ever drop out. Obviously, because he is Trump, his ego would not allow him to admit a mistake. But the Republican party members who fantasize about replacing him with another candidate are not grasping a bigger point: there are
a whole bunch of reasons why replacing Trump wouldn't save this election right now.

No, Mike Pence wouldn't win. Paul Ryan wouldn't win. Ted Cruz wouldn't win. Sarah Palin wouldn't win. Mitt Romney wouldn't win. Maybe some of those people could have hypothetically stood a small chance of winning if they had been the GOP candidate from the beginning, and had some time to campaign, but not now.

The die-hard Trump fans are real. They may not be a majority of the country. They may or may not even be a majority of the Republican party. But they are a substantial group -- let's wildly guess at least 30% of the party -- and they totally love what Trump is selling: putting women, uppity minorities, and scumbag liberals in their proper place. The outwardly more stable elements of the GOP, your George Wills and your William Kristols, they can wring their hands and pay all the lip service they want to how that's not really who they are. But that group of die-hards are the ones who Trump bragged wouldn't quit him even if he shot someone in broad daylight. I think that's true. I don't think it's true of all or even most Republicans, but enough of them.

So here's what happens if Trump is somehow forced to step down, or he just flips a table and stalks out on his own. He takes most of those people with him. Either way, they're going to loudly declare that the Republican party has been taken over by a bunch of pussies and cucks, and hey, screw that Mike Pence bastard anyway for throwing Trump under the bus, Pence can't run a country if he doesn't even respect Vladimir Putin.

This is the corner that the Republican party has painted themselves into. They've spent decades denouncing the concept of experts and intellectuals and fact checking. They've made everything out to be subjective, and all they have left to fill the vacuum is the cult of personality that created this monstrosity of a campaign in the first place.

I'm not telling people to get complacent. You should vote for Clinton, because she doesn't just need to win; she needs a landslide. Even if you're tepid on Clinton as a candidate from a personal point of view, it's important that this country firmly and unambiguously renounce the deplorables. Vote. Donate. Phone bank on election week. Don't just make Trump lose; humiliate him thoroughly for all time.

The next election will probably bring on more of the same. If the Republicans bury their heads in the sand and leave the primary process as it is, there are plenty of other Trumps waiting to take on the mantle. If the Republicans DO change their primary system, they'll piss off the deplorables and be left with a fairly pitiful token opposition without that boost. Either way, they'll lose again. Make it happen.

No, Trump won't drop out, and it wouldn't matter if he did.

Perhaps I am stating the obvious here, but Donald Trump will never, ever drop out. Obviously, because he is Trump, his ego would not allow him to admit a mistake. But the Republican party members who fantasize about replacing him with another candidate are not grasping a bigger point: there are
a whole bunch of reasons why replacing Trump wouldn't save this election right now.

No, Mike Pence wouldn't win. Paul Ryan wouldn't win. Ted Cruz wouldn't win. Sarah Palin wouldn't win. Mitt Romney wouldn't win. Maybe some of those people could have hypothetically stood a small chance of winning if they had been the GOP candidate from the beginning, and had some time to campaign, but not now.

The die-hard Trump fans are real. They may not be a majority of the country. They may or may not even be a majority of the Republican party. But they are a substantial group -- let's wildly guess at least 30% of the party -- and they totally love what Trump is selling: putting women, uppity minorities, and scumbag liberals in their proper place. The outwardly more stable elements of the GOP, your George Wills and your William Kristols, they can wring their hands and pay all the lip service they want to how that's not really who they are. But that group of die-hards are the ones who Trump bragged wouldn't quit him even if he shot someone in broad daylight. I think that's true. I don't think it's true of all or even most Republicans, but enough of them.

So here's what happens if Trump is somehow forced to step down, or he just flips a table and stalks out on his own. He takes most of those people with him. Either way, they're going to loudly declare that the Republican party has been taken over by a bunch of pussies and cucks, and hey, screw that Mike Pence bastard anyway for throwing Trump under the bus, Pence can't run a country if he doesn't even respect Vladimir Putin.

This is the corner that the Republican party has painted themselves into. They've spent decades denouncing the concept of experts and intellectuals and fact checking. They've made everything out to be subjective, and all they have left to fill the vacuum is the cult of personality that created this monstrosity of a campaign in the first place.

I'm not telling people to get complacent. You should vote for Clinton, because she doesn't just need to win; she needs a landslide. Even if you're tepid on Clinton as a candidate from a personal point of view, it's important that this country firmly and unambiguously renounce the deplorables. Vote. Donate. Phone bank on election week. Don't just make Trump lose; humiliate him thoroughly for all time.

The next election will probably bring on more of the same. If the Republicans bury their heads in the sand and leave the primary process as it is, there are plenty of other Trumps waiting to take on the mantle. If the Republicans DO change their primary system, they'll piss off the deplorables and be left with a fairly pitiful token opposition without that boost. Either way, they'll lose again. Make it happen.

Hey Democrats, chill out, we're winning

I don't have a lot of respect for the Republican party, but there is one thing I've always thought they were really good at: confident bluster.

In the 2012 election, polls consistently showed pretty consistently that Obama was going to win re-election. So this whole alternate reality sprung up around "unskewing the polls". Websites popped up dedicated to fudging the math and nitpicking the demographics of mainstream polls. They proved that Romney wasn't just going to win; he was going to win in a landslide. On election night, Karl Rove was sitting on Fox News stating with certainty that the math showed Romney winning easily.

...Moments before they called it for Obama.

Political lessons from Game of Thrones

This is a repost from my Facebook feed.

One of the reasons I love Game of Thrones -- both books and shows -- is because it provides such great examples of how politics often works. I’ve brought that up often to my friends this election season.

There are two separate areas where any candidate can stand or fall. The first thing is that politicians create policy. Ultimately what we should want most from our politicians is that they will enact good policy. During an election season, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we’re not just talking about a sports competition, where we hate the other team because they’re our rivals, and their wins and losses make us happy and sad just because they’re part of the tribe.

We want to elect good politicians because we want them to do stuff that matters on a large scale. Build infrastructure. Improve the economy. Keep the populace safe. Make sure the justice system is fair. Etc.

(continued...)

Some ambivalent thoughts about democracy

I've been listening to the 538 election podcast talking about the Brexit vote while I wait for my son's band concert to start. Having some weirdly ambivalent thoughts about democracy.

I think one of the most pressing problems in any society is making sure that minorities don't get stripped of their rights. This is a non trivial issue to solve. Appointed rulers (i.e. kings) tend to care about disempowered people very little. Entrenched ruling groups, like an established board of directors for a company, tend to empower people that they like personally, and in practice bring in more people who look and think like them.

But then again, mobs of people don't necessarily make informed decisions, and then they can STILL be indifferent to minority rights when voting. So for example, we have the 1964 civil rights act, which prevents anyone in the entire country from discriminating in various arenas. If it was put to a state by state vote, many states might explicitly give preferential treatment to straight white males. But we prevent them from doing that on purpose, because you shouldn't be able to vote away some people's rights.

I'm not British, so I don't have the most thorough understanding of Brexit. But the sense I get is that those who voted "Leave" are most generally the UK equivalent of Trump supporters -- i.e., cranky xenophobic nationalists. This is probably an oversimplification of both countries, but it's the rule of thumb I'm going with for now. I'm hearing that many Brits are experiencing buyer's remorse, having made a "protest vote" without really understanding the impact of the decision, and having ridiculed and dismissed "experts" such as economists, who universally said this vote would be bad news. In the US it seems like a popular stance to oppose "career politicians" and vote for outsiders who haven't held office before. Donald Trump is like the end game of this strategy.

In politics, as in other areas like science and medicine, I think there is definitely something to be said for weighting the input of experts differently than other people. Sure, power corrupts. But also, it would be great if judgement on a law was made more by people who have had time to study the law and understand the issue better.

But on the other hand, we go back to appointed rulers having likely biases against "commoners." So it's a tough thing to figure out a fair system.

State of the Democratic primary, part 2: Hillary Clinton on LGBT rights

As I said in my previous post, I like Bernie Sanders, and I like Hillary Clinton, and I'd enthusiastically support either of them in their run for president against Donald Trump (the likely Republican front runner at this moment). I also think that Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the nomination, and that's fine with me.

I have heard a lot of people dismiss Hillary Clinton as "pretty good... for a Republican" or say that she's not a real liberal. I totally disagree, and in my next few posts I hope to make a convincing case that Clinton is, for liberals, a pretty good liberal ally, and vastly superior to Donald Trump. (Which, admittedly, is a low bar for me.)

State of the Democratic primary, part 1: Post Super Tuesday evaluation

Here are a few brief comments about what I think of the state of the Democratic primary so far.

1. Bernie Sanders is a fine candidate who would make a good president.
2. Hillary Clinton is a fine candidate who would make a good president.
3. Neither candidate is perfect. They both have strengths and weaknesses.
4. They are, however, both miles better in almost every way than Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.
5. With a few exceptions, both candidates have run generally positive campaigns, and most likely the losing candidate will be gracious and endorse the winner.
6. Hillary Clinton has moved to a better and more openly liberal platform due to Bernie Sanders' involvement in the race. Whether Sanders wins the nomination or not, he has been an extremely good influence overall and I appreciate that.
7. Looking at the Super Tuesday results, and the polling of upcoming states, I think there is a very strong likelihood that Clinton will be the nominee. It's not a sure thing, but I give it good odds.
8. ...And that's just fine.

I know I have many liberal friends who will disagree with me on several of those points. No problem.

I have a lot of concrete reasons for thinking that Hillary Clinton is a decent candidate, and my fellow Democrats should be proud to support her in the general election. I also know that many reasonable Bernie Sanders have not yet conceded my point #7, so I'm a little wary of making them defensive by posting them right now. The question will probably be resolved one way or the other in the next few weeks, or by July 25th at the latest, and I've already voted. So while I do think Clinton will be the nominee, I don't feel strongly about arguing for it right now.

Regardless, I've heard a few Bernie Sanders supporters say they feel very depressed when they contemplate their candidate possibly losing the primary. I understand this disappointment, but I don't share the feeling that Sanders is the one and only candidate who can do the right thing in office for the next four to eight years.

For those people, I will be posting a follow up to this post in the near future, discussing my thoughts on Clinton as the nominee. Should Sanders turn the tide in the meantime, that's fine too; my arguments will not be needed.

2016 predictions

Yesterday was election day for a lot of things that didn't matter much. That means we're one year from picking a new president. I have some expectations for that election. This is almost certainly unwise, you should never put out a record of predicting the future in a way where you can be proven wrong later. But I think it's fun, and I think I have a pretty good track record for broad predictions in the last two presidential races. So here comes my prophecy for 2016. Succeed or fail, you can expect me to link back to this post one year from now.

This post is probably going to make some of my friends angry, so please bear in mind that (1) this is what I EXPECT will happen, not necessarily what I HOPE will happen; and (2) This is far from certain, and I am open to admitting how wrong I was, but I do have enough arrogance to say "I told you so" if I am right. Arguing in the comments will probably not be educational to me or any other participant, but I predict it will happen anyway. :)

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will be the only candidates in the race very soon. The national polls today show Clinton ahead of Sanders by roughly a factor of 2:1. That gap will shift around a little, he may get as close as 3:2 at some times, but after the day when a bunch of Southern states vote, it will be fairly clear he's not going to win. He will remain in the primary race until at least half the states have voted, but not much longer.

Sanders will accept defeat with relative grace, and will announce that he supports Clinton (with clearly stated reservations). He will probably be offered a cabinet position or even the VP spot. He won't necessarily accept. Many Sanders fans, on the other hand, will be very angry. They will declare that the system is rigged, and threaten not to vote for Clinton or anyone. Some of them will definitely follow through on this threat, although if Sanders does join the ticket then all bets are off.

Donald Trump will continue grabbing headlines for a while. He still be in the news all the damn time six months from now, because he's hilarious to talk about, but he won't be the candidate. After the first few states vote, there will be one or two very obvious choices for the most viable "anti-Trump candidate." Many other Republicans will finally start to drop out, and the remaining primary voters will coalesce around the anti-Trump. I have no idea who this candidate is right now, but I don't think it's Ben Carson. Wild guess: Marco Rubio has a shot. Don't hold me to that one.

Trump will call the eventual anti-Trump a loser in public many, many times, before that person becomes the official GOP candidate. Trump's concession speech will be incredibly petty. The Republican candidate will be more moderate than most of the candidates running today, and Republican voters in general will be really tepid in their support for him, but they'll grumble and go along with it anyway and pretend to like him.

Not-Trump nominee will try to fire up the base by saying and doing things that will alienate a lot of voters who aren't Republicans. He will especially be a complete dick to women, racial minorities, and non-Christians.

Clinton will have a lot of Barack Obama's campaign team on her staff. They will make very careful plans about which states they need to focus on in order to guarantee victory, and they will ask a lot of volunteers to help keep Democrats interested in the race. Republicans will constantly repeat that most people agree with them on all the issues, and that the polls which say otherwise are just the liberal media lying as usual.

Hillary will win the popular vote by a relatively small margin, but her strategists will ensure that she wins the electoral vote by a ridiculous number that is an obvious landslide. Republicans will say the election was stolen, and they'll also focus on the popular vote to say that Clinton has no mandate.

Gerrymandered districts will guarantee that Republicans keep the house, but it's a toss-up whether they keep the Senate. They will immediately begin discussing how to impeach Clinton before her term starts.

I have spoken. You are hereby invited to bookmark this post and dredge it up so you can make fun of me once I am proven wrong.

Trumpmania! and a grand unified theory of the Republican party

Well... it's been two years since I posted here. This blog is in a weird area of my attention, because these days I do so much small scale writing on Facebook and Twitter that I don't feel a strong need to write blogs very often; and when I do, The Atheist Experience blog gets most of my attention. But ya know, political season is almost upon us, and writing about politics is one niche that I think this blog definitely still fills.

Ed Brayton​ posted the following on Facebook:

"I will win is the Hispanic vote … I’ll create jobs, and I’ll get the Hispanic vote … the Hispanics love me." -- Donald Trump 

New poll: 81% of Hispanics have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared to 13% with a favorable view. 

Yep Don, they love you. Absolutely love you. That's what happens when you view the world through gaudy gold-plated glasses.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, revisited

Lynnea and I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind last night. The only other time I've seen it was in its theater release in 2004. It's weird to think how different everything was back then. Ben was two years old, I hadn't started grad school yet, and my first marriage still seemed more or less stable. Hard to believe, but it was nine years ago. I remembered very well that the movie was a good mind screw, but I hadn't remembered all the details, so really I went through the surprises all over again. Lynnea had not seen it before at all.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!

Superman vs. the Klan.

I downloaded a series of episodes of the old Superman radio serial called "Clan of the Fiery Cross," which Ben and I have started listening to in the car.  These episodes have some historical significance, as told by Wikipedia and this book:

Apparently There was a human rights activist who infiltrated the Klan and documented a bunch of secret meetings.  He went to the producers of Superman with this information, and they turned it into a series of episodes in which Superman battles the Klan as the main villain.  It helped a lot in delegitimizing them.  Naturally, I love stories about using entertainment media to solve real social problems.

It's really funny to listen to old radio shows.  As a kid I owned some cassette tapes with selected episodes of George and Gracie, The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, and Charlie McCarthy, so I'm familiar with the big-talking style of radio stories, but it's new to Ben and he finds it hilarious.  We've only heard one episode out of 16 so far, so we've only gotten vague hints that Klan members will show up.  What makes it particularly funny is that it's full of slang from the 40's.  I simply have no idea whether the dialogue is well written or sounded natural when, for example, everybody keeps referring to one character (a little league pitcher) as a "sorehead."  "He's such a sorehead!"  "Don't be a sorehead, buddy!"  Over and over again.

It also led to a discussion with Ben about why the production values are so low.  He mentioned that the radio show -- which obviously has one guy playing an organ for all the background music, heroic or sinister -- doesn't sound as good as a movie or TV show.  I pointed out that it costs a lot to compose a professional score and hire a full orchestra, and these guys had to crank out an episode every week, plus the business of radio shows may not have been big enough to justify any kind of serious budget.

What's especially interesting is how thoroughly integrated the advertising is with the show.  One minute the announcer will be breathlessly describing the exploits of Jimmy Olsen, and another minute he'll be saying, "Kids, Kellogg's Pep is delicious.  When your mom brings you Kellogg's Pep, make sure you eat it ALL and don't waste any.  And pass on this important information to your family, so they'll know how to eat Pep properly."  These ads would go on for about two minutes, and Pep was the only product being advertised in the first show.  (I looked it up, Pep was a competitor to Wheaties and contained toy prizes like Cracker Jacks did.)

It was comically transparent, and it made me wonder whether or not advertising has gotten cleverer or more subtle since then.  To be honest, the way I consume media allows me to avoid the most obnoxious commercials.  I don't have a cable subscription, so everything I watch is via Netflix, DVDs, movie theaters, or downloads, and I have ad filters on all my browsers.  When I see a commercial on TV outside my house it tends to make me cringe.  Still, it's probably not as bad as the actors waving products around while doing the show.

You can download the episodes from this archive, or look them up on YouTube.

Election night cheer

Now let's see here... as I write this, Florida, Virginia, and Montana are the only states still considered too close to call, but Obama is ahead in all three.  Absent those results, the electoral votes stand at 290-200.  Obama could lose them all and he still has the election.  If Obama wins them all, that would be 338-200.  That would mean that Obama beat Romney and it wasn't close.

Who could have predicted such an outcome?

...Oh that's right, ME.

The technology of election turnout: My experience as a phone bank volunteer

Happy election day, everybody.  Nate Silver shows Barack Obama with a 91.6% chance of winning today, and a projected electoral college of 315-223 votes.  I look forward to the results at the end, so that I can see whether my "not at all close" prediction from early May will give me gloating rights or make me look foolish.  This guy, of course, still believes that Romney is way ahead and has been the whole time.  We'll see, right?

This week I used up some of my remaining Paid Time Off days.  While I was out of the office, I decided to take a break from the obvious regimen of improving at video games, to visit a local phone bank.  I put in six hours on Saturday, and three on Monday.

[...]

Election thoughts 2: Momentum and winning with intangibles

In my last post I talked about the long term consequences of the Republican strategy and about why Mitt Romney is losing as a result of it.  The question, though, is just how badly he is losing.

I've linked to electoral-vote.com often, since it is a site which breaks down polls state by state and collects them into an overall picture of how the important numbers may shake out in the election.  A similar site, with better analysis, is Five Thirty Eight, a New York Times blog run by Nate Silver, which uses some complicated math formulas to forecast the probabilities of each candidate winning.  (538 is the total number of electoral votes available from all 50 states.)

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Election thoughts 1: Divide, conquer, and lose

This election season has been great for making me feel overconfident.  Back in early May, I predicted that Obama is going to beat Romney, and it's not going to be very close.  With less than two months to go, I see no reason to revise that estimate.  When I made my prediction the score was 290-215 electoral votes.  As of today, it is now 319-206; the lead that was overwhelming before has increased by 38 EVs.

And talking about overconfidence, lately I've been leaning towards a theory that the Republican party is even more screwed than they appear to be.  It all has to do with a strategy proposed to Richard Nixon, which has worked very well for Republicans but seems to be backfiring now.

I enjoyed the latest XKCD so much that I had to actually perform it.

Early election prognostication

I'm going to go ahead and make my presidential election prediction right now, subject to wild swings as new evidence comes in: Obama is going to beat Romney, and it's not going to be very close.

I'm basing this on largely on the status of http://www.electoral-vote.com/, a site I followed obsessively in 2008, and they wound up being a pretty good indicator of the race.

Electoral map as of 5/2/2012

Since Romney secured the nomination, nationwide polling on Obama vs. Romney has been close enough to be called a dead heat in some cases.  This one, for example.  Despite this, right now on a state by state basis, the election numbers look really, really good for the incumbent.